Remanufactured—or recycled—printer cartridges are sent to a manufacturer who will restock the ink and replace or repair any parts that are damaged or not working correctly. When an inkjet cartridge is remanufactured or refilled, often the amount of ink in the remanufactured cartridge is not equivalent to the amount of ink that was provided by the original fill of that cartridge. This can be for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the ink fill capability of the remanufacturer, technical issues with the used cartridge that may reduce the amount of ink it is capable of holding after remanufacture, and also simply the amount of ink the remanufacturer wishes to fill.
When this remanufactured cartridge is installed in a printer, there is a need for the printer to know how much ink is remaining in the cartridge. This information is used to provide a gauge to track ink remaining which can be communicated to the user. This information can also be used to indicate when a new cartridge should be purchased or shipped to the customer, or to disable function of the cartridge when a certain amount of ink has been used (i.e., if cartridge is empty).
Since the ink filled into a cartridge during remanufacture is not necessarily equivalent to the ink filled originally, the printer will be unable to determine this information for the remanufactured cartridge based on the information originally programmed into the cartridge memory.